Consider the first words spoken by the Lord Jesus in Mark's Gospel. "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). The time has come? What time? Did Jesus "just happen" to come when He did, or was it right on schedule? "God has a plan," it is often said. YES, He does! Hopefully you'll be amazed and encouraged as we dig into the Scriptures to see the divine elegance and precision of that plan. Let's go to the book of Daniel…
As a teen, Daniel (along with his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, et. al.) was deported to Babylon c. 605 B.C. He was groomed to served the Babylonian throne and pressured to adopt Babylonian culture. Even the young men's names were changed. Daniel is one of the few Biblical saints of whom no sins are recorded; but the book bearing his name is about much more than "dare to be a Daniel" in purity and bravery.
When Babylon's King Nebuchadnezzar had a vivid and troubling dream, trouble arose in his court. Desiring to know the interpretation of it, he demanded not only that his magi (wise men; advisors) interpret the dream, but first tell him what the dream had been! Of course no one could do it, so the king in his mad hubris decreed that all the wise men be destroyed, including Daniel. But Daniel and his friends prayed to their all-knowing, sovereign God, Who revealed to Daniel both what the king dreamed and its interpretation, briefly summarized as follows:
Nebuchanezzar dreamed of a giant statue. It had a golden head, its torso and arms were of silver, its waist and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, and its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. The interpretation given to Nebuchadnezzar through Daniel was that he and the Babylonian empire were represented by the head of gold. That empire would be succeeded by that of Medo-Persia, represented by the silver part of the dream statue. Medo-Persia would be superceded by the empire of Greece (think Alexander the great), represented by the bronze part, and finally the Roman empire, represented by iron and clay, would achieve the hegemony. And that brings us to Daniel 2:44:
"And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever."
This is one of the most thrilling verses in all Scripture. Over five hundred years before Christ's first advent, this prophetic statement tells of the establishment of His Messianic kingdom. It was in the days of the Roman emperors ("those kings") that Christ's Messianic kingdom began. Tiberius Caesar was in his 15th year as emperor when John the baptizer's ministry began (cf. Luke 3:1; Tiberius remained on the throne until A.D. 37). Within a few years, Jesus had died, risen, and ascended to proclaim that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him. The prophecy of Isaiah 9 often heard during Advent season was fulfilled…to us a Son is born…the government will be upon His shoulders…He is the prince of peace. And as our "guardian text" in 1 Corinthians 15 reminds us, King Jesus will continue to reign until all enemies are beneath His feet!
Let's move on to Daniel 9. There we find that lover of God's word, Daniel, perceiving that the seventy years of captivity in Babylon was about to end. He brings the matter before the Lord in earnest prayer. But why was the captivity to last seventy years? Leviticus 25:2-4 tells us about the sabbath year. Not only did the Law of God codify the weekly sabbath which God established at creation, but it ordained that every seventh year be a year of rest for the land. In Levticus 26:33-35 we find that part of God's threatened punishment for unfaithfulness on His people's part would be banishment for a time equivalent to the number of years that the sabbath year was ignored. For four hundred and ninety years prior to the Babylonian captivity there had been no sabbatical year observance. So the seventy year banishment brought about by the agency of Nebuchadnezzar had been inflicted by God on account of the previous four hundred and ninety years of His people's unfaithfulness. Cf. Jeremiah 25:11, 12 and 2 Chronicles 36:20, 21.
So Daniel understands Jeremiah's prophecy and the reason for the seventy year captivity. He prays. What is revealed to him? In vss. 24ff, essentially the work of Christ! "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy," Rev. 19:10. There will be another four hundred and ninety years – seventy heptads (sevens) or weeks of years, broken down into three segments: seven sevens, sixty-two sevens, and one seven. Vs. 24 tells us what be accomplished within that period:
Bible commentator Matthew Henry called this passage "…the most illustrious prediction of Christ and gospel-grace that is extant in all the Old Testament."
As with interpretations that claim the entire Olivet Discourse is future, so asserting that the end of the seventy sevens is still to come, that there is some kind of "gap" in the completion of the four hundred ninety years only obscures this glorious Gospel prediction. Instead just as we can establish the time of creation to about six thousand years ago based on the geneologies of Genesis 5 and 12 and the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so we can pin point the coming of the Messiah, and why Jesus said what is recorded at Mark 1:15.
But what is the starting point of the four hundred ninety years? The angel tells Daniel that they would start with "the going out of the word (i.e. decree) to restore and build Jerusalem." There were several decrees. Perhaps the most well known is Cyrus' decree, 2 Chr. 36:22,23 & Ezra 1:1-4. That pertained specifically to the temple. Gabriel speaks to Daniel (9:25) about a decree which pertains to the whole city of Jerusalem.
A decree of king Artaxerxes is recorded at Ezra 7:11ff (repeated, Neh.2:7,8). That decree was in the year 457 B.C. Subtracting the first segment (seven sevens or forty-nine yrs.) brings us to 408 B.C. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah chronicle that period; per Ezra 5:1 the prophets Haggai and Zechariah ministered at that time. The temple and city were rebuilt by that time. (That second temple, the one built by Solomon being the first, was doomed to be destroyed in A.D. 70.)
Sixty-two more sevens, four hundred and thirty four years, bring us to 26 A.D. Now let's try to date Christ's birth and the beginning of His public ministry. Again, believing scholars differ here. That being said, follow this reasoning in the Scriptures:
Per Matthew 2:19, Jesus was a very young Child in Egypt when Herod died, which according to extra-Biblica sources occurred in 4 B.C. Luke 3:23 tells us that Jesus was "about age thirty" when His public ministry began. So 26 A.D. would have been His baptism (anointing). After three and half years of public ministry, His death, resurrection, and ascension took place. That would have been 30 A.D. in the middle of the seventieth seven, just as the angel told Daniel CENTURIES before! By the patient grace of God, although the old covenant economy was over as of Jesus' once for all sacrifice, the temple's destruction and Jerusalem's desolation would not be until forty years later, as Jesus predicted in the Olivet Discourse regarding THAT generation.
(It should be noted that there is no "year zero". And Jesus not being born in the year 1 A.D. does not cast any aspersion on the Bible. The Gregorian calendar used almost universally in modern times is wrong, not Scripture!)
But what about the last of the seventy sevens? That is where some commentators go bonkers! Just as some distort the account of divine creation with a "gap theory," they claim last seven years is STILL future! That's hyper-futurism! Daniel 9:26,27 says that Messiah the Prince would be cut off after the sixty-two sevens, in the middle of the seventieth. That "cutting off" was Jesus' atoning death. All was accomplished WITHIN the 70 sevens. There is no need for the end of seventieth seven to be mentioned.
So to sum up, at about 600 B.C. the time of the setting up of the Messianic kingdom of God was foretold with great precision. When Jesus began to preach the Gospel of the kingdom, He said the time was fulfilled and that the kingdom was at hand. After His passion in the middle of the seventieth seven, Jesus ascended to take His throne. About forty years later came what Luke calls the days of vengeance. Jesus came on the clouds of heaven. That does not refer to His personal, visible return to earth which is indeed still to come, praise God! It means that He came to judge His own nation, His own that did not receive Him (John 1:11). They did not recognize the time of their visitation and rejected and murdered their Savior, crying out "His blood be on us and on our children!" (Matthew 27:25)
Go to A Survey of Eschatology, Part Ten